Hiccups
by capableoflove
Summary: Ginny Weasley has a bad case of the hiccups and Draco Malfoy has the perfect cure.


Ginny had a potions exam the next day and she needed to study badly. That was why she was on her way to the library at 9 o'clock on a Wednesday evening. She was hoping she could find some peace and quiet, unlike the Gryffindor common room. Ron and Hermione were fighting again and the noise they created, made it impossible to think let alone get in some good study time. So she had gathered her school supplies up and was currently trudging down to the library.

As usual, the library was full with students. The larger tables were packed with students and their work. There wasn't an open seat in sight, but Ginny didn't care. She walked past the tables in the front and through the bookshelves towards her favorite spot in the library. She spent so much time there that she thought of it as hers.

It was a secluded corner in the back that few students had bothered to find, however that day it looked like she had company. Someone else was there sitting at her table.

He was blonde, and leaning back in his chair precariously. It was obviously Malfoy and knowing Malfoy, he wouldn't leave and studying near him would be damn near impossible. The rest of the library was already full so she couldn't leave and find another spot. She needed him to leave so she could get down to work. He hadn't yet noticed he was being watched and Ginny decided she could use that fact to her advantage. She set her jaw and if anyone had been watching, they would probably have noted how eerily similar Ginny looked to the twins in that moment. She remembered how George had literally scared her out of her chair one time and decided to take a page out of his book.

She set down her book bag gently and crept toward her unsuspecting victim.

"Boo!" she yelled.

As she had suspected, he was quite startled and lost his balance. His chair tipped backwards and met the floor with a resounding crash. He looked up at her with shock and surprise. It was too much for her to handle. She tried rather valiantly to muffle the giggles behind her hands but they wouldn't be held back.

She downright laughed when he scrambled out of the chair ungracefully and dusted off his robes. His face and neck were a glorious shade of pink. And Ginny snorted when she realized Malfoy, Draco Malfoy was blushing.

Her laughter seemed to incense him and he took a step toward her.

"Why you little..." he growled. He was trying to intimidate her, but seeing someone fall arse over tea kettle reduces their scariness. She tried to arrange her face into a somewhat cowed look but it wouldn't comply.

She knew she was just making him angrier and the angrier he got the less likely it would be that he would leave her alone so she could study.

"I'm sorry... but you have... to admit... that was pretty funny." she mumbled between giggles. He didn't seem amused, however, in fact for a second she was worried he was going to hit her. He clenched his fist and Ginny noticed his white knuckles. Her eyes widened and she thought for one terrible moment that maybe she had taken it too far, he was Lucius' son and would have no qualms about such things as hitting a girl. She prepared herself for the impact of Malfoy's fist.

It never came. Instead without a word he spun on his heel and strode over to the table. He righted the chair and gathered his stuff that had been scattered when he fell.

Inside Ginny jumped up and down with glee and patted herself on the back. She thought he would leave, so she was obviously disappointed when he sat down in the chair he had been using before and began to study.

She stood there for a moment trying to decide if it was some kind of trick. Maybe he was luring her into a false sense of security then he'd jump up and attack her. When he didn't seem to pay any attention to her at all. She shrugged to herself and sat down at the chair as far from Malfoy as she could get.

The first thing she realized was that all that laughing had given her the hiccups. The second thing she realized was that it was damn near impossible to study for a potions exam if you had the hiccups.

She quickly remembered the trick her mother had taught her to cure the hiccups and held her breath for 30 seconds. She was up to 9 when she was interrupted by a particularly violent hiccup. Her brother Bill had once told her to drink a glass of water so she transformed one of her quills into a glass and filled it using _aguamenti_. She drank it and waited.

Sure enough, after a second of two she hiccuped. She looked across the table to Malfoy and saw him grind his teeth. She found some small comfort in the fact that her hiccups were also bothering him.

Her hiccups weren't going away anytime soon, so she resigned herself to trying to just ignore them. She was trying to focus on memorizing the ingredients of a complex potion when she had a little surprise.

"Boo!" Draco yelled right into her ear. And she, like Malfoy had earlier, lost her balance and tipped over. She had been trying so hard to study that she had been oblivious to Malfoy leaving his seat and tip-toeing behind hers. He had gotten her good she had to admit. She glared up at a smug Malfoy from her spot on the floor and glared.

She felt incredibly dumb to have fallen for the same trick she had used on him, and she had only done it ten minutes earlier. She stood up, using all the height she could muster and attempted to look intimidating. She scowled up at his face.

She was still trying to come up with a witty rebuke while looking mean when Draco asked her a question.

"Are you okay? You look constipated?"

"I'm being hic intimidating, I'll hic have you know."

"Oh yeah, I'm shaking in my robes."

"You hic should be."

"Hey don't mad at me, I was merely trying to be considerate and scare the hiccups out of you. It was purely philanthropic."

"Well too hic bad it didn't hic work."

"Are you sure you've tried everything?" Draco asked desperately.

Ginny wanted to laugh at his childish behavior, "Yes hic, I'm sure."

"I can't bloody well study with you hiccuping every two seconds can I?"

"No I hic don't suppose hic you can."

"I've heard of one more cure... Oh forget it, never mind."

"Malfoy hic! If you hic know a cure hic you better tell me hic right now!" she ordered, looking remarkably like the elder Molly Weasley as she rested her hands on her hips.

"It's a little weird."

"Just hic tell me."

"Do you trust me?"

"No." she stated matter-of-factly. He merely raised one eyebrow at her reproachingly."

"Fine. But hic if you make me hic eat some kind of hic bug or some..."

The rest of the sentence came out as a strangled sound because it's rather difficult to speak coherently if Draco Malfoy is trying to suck your face off. Okay, well maybe not off, but he was trying to suck on it. He was succeeding too. Ginny would have been much angrier if she didn't like it so much.

He was gripping her arms rather tightly, pulling her body flush against his. She stiffened at the unexpected contact of his lips on hers, but after a moment's indecision she melted against him.

It was hard to think with him kissing her and the way he was rubbing circles on her upper arms with his thumbs, and the way her knee was pressed between his legs, and how she was straining upwards to meet him, and how he was making little mewling sounds in the back of his throat. Oh wait, that last one was her, never mind. Well you get the point, she was pretty flustered.

Her arms, moving of their own accord snaked up to link around his neck. She ran her hands wildly through his hair taking perverse pleasure in the fact that she was messing it up. She started feeling faint, and for one frenzied moment thought that she maybe liked Malfoy, but she dismissed that when she realized that the dizziness was just from the lack of oxygen. She pushed away from and took a step back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She saw Malfoy doing the same. She just stood there breathing rather heavily for a second, not quite sure what to say. She was spared the decision.

"Voila," he drawled, "Doctor Malfoy declares your hiccups officially cured."

"Huh?" she said confused and finally realized that she wasn't hiccupping anymore. "Yes! Er, thank you. I guess." she said awkwardly, remembering their heated liplock only moments earlier.

"My pleasure." he said in a way that Ginny knew he meant in more ways than one. She blushed, suddenly feeling embarrassed at the way she had reacted to his touches. She bit her lip and noticed, with satisfaction, the way his breath caught and how his gaze was locked on her lips. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

"No," she growled unusually hoarse, "The pleasure was all mine." With that, she brushed by him and sat down at the table to study nonchalantly. Taking her cue, he acted like nothing had happened and sat back down in his spot. It was hard with Malfoy sitting in such close proximity to her, but she forced her mind to focus on the work.

An hour later, Madam Pince emerged from behind one of the bookshelves.

"The Library is closing in ten minutes." she informed them before moving on to tell more students.

Without a word, the two students gathered up their stuff and headed back to their respective common rooms, where they both sat in silent and confused contemplation for a long while into the night.


End file.
